


I Thought I Was Broken...Until I Met You

by TheeAnonymousFangirl



Category: Dead To Me (TV)
Genre: Broken, F/F, Healing, Heartbreak, Love, Pain, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:41:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25193350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheeAnonymousFangirl/pseuds/TheeAnonymousFangirl
Summary: Life has not been kind to Jen or Judy, but one thing the universe did get right was bringing them together.
Relationships: Judy Hale & Jen Harding, Judy Hale/Jen Harding
Comments: 5
Kudos: 76





	I Thought I Was Broken...Until I Met You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jisooramen on Twiter](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=jisooramen+on+Twiter).



> This idea was given to me months ago and I finally finished it! So, Vi, this one's for you!
> 
> Also, I have read this over a ton of times, but I'm sure I missed some errors. Please ignore and I hope you enjoy :)
> 
> I am also going to add this TW: there is a slight mention of abuse and SH

When Judy Hale was seven she broke her arm falling off a jungle gym. Her mother rolled her eyes and dragged her to the ER. Tears slipped down Judy’s face as she sat on a hospital bed telling her mother she was broken. Her mother told her to stop crying and to “act like a big girl. No one likes an annoying crybaby.” With her mother’s lack of care, her arm wasn’t the only thing broken. But the doctor wrapped the limb in a cast, stuck it in a sling, and sent her home. Her arm healed and she was back to being the charismatic seven-year-old that her mother tried to ignore.

When Judy was 11 her mom’s drug addict boyfriend hit her. She had been holed up in her tiny room that was really a glorified closet, waiting for the pair to pass out from the drugs and alcohol in their system so she could sneak into the kitchen for a snack. Her stomach grumbled as she listened to their loud laugher that quickly turned into yelling. There was a crash. And then another one. Her mother screamed and then there was a loud thump. Judy could hear her mother whimpering and crying. She ran out of her hiding place to her mother’s side where she was laying on the living room floor, her face bloodied. The man held his hand up, ready to strike. Judy clung to her mother, trying to protect her. A sharp pain ripped through Judy’s jaw and she knew he had hit her. Tears instantly filled her eyes. He yelled nasty things at the both of them before storming out the door, never to be seen again. That night, Judy gently wiped a warm washcloth over her mother’s face, cleaning the blood. She went back to her room after her mother had fallen asleep, and cried. She wasn’t hungry anymore. Her face still stung and a little piece of her felt broken inside. Weeks passed and the incident became a repressed memory. Judy healed again. 

Three years later, when Judy was 14, her mother left her. It wasn’t the first time. Her mother would leave often for a night or two and return tired, the beginning stages of the lack of drugs in her system beginning to set in. Judy would have to fend for herself during these times, which wasn’t entirely new since even when her mom was around, she wasn’t the most attentive. At least she had a housemate when her mom was home. But this abandonment was different. After the two day mark, Judy expected her mother to stumble through the door, but then another day passed. And another. And suddenly it was a week and there was no sign of the woman. Bits of Judy’s already fragile heart were beginning to crumble at the edges. She began to worry the drugs had finally caught up with her mother and taken her. 

On the ninth day of Judy’s mom disappearing, the 14-year-old couldn’t take it anymore. It was late in the evening when she was staring blankly at the clock, willing the ticking hands to bring her mother home. Fury and pain had built up too long inside her body. Without thinking, her hands almost moving on their own accord, she picked up the lone glass sitting on the coffee table and chucked it as hard as she could at the wall opposite her. It shattered upon contact and Judy inhaled sharply. She couldn’t believe she had done it, things like this weren’t how she acted. This was how her mom acted. She stood up slowly and gingerly picked up one of the many pieces of glass that landed on the stained carpet. She held it up to the light and studied it. Adding pressure, she pushed on it until it cut through her skin and bright red blood began to trickle down her thumb, her wrist, and then her arm. She stopped and dropped the piece back on the floor. Tears streamed down her eyes as she screamed with pain. But not pain from the cut. Pain from her life. Judy could physically feel herself breaking inside. She didn’t know how much longer she could do this, but she also knew she didn’t have the guts to leave. She dried her tears, tended to the wound, and cleaned up the mess. The next day her mother returned. Judy never told her about her breakdown, and her mother never told her where she had disappeared to. The cut became a scar, a memory she chose not to remember. Judy let herself forget and pretend it didn’t happen, healing once again. 

At 17, Judy got her heart broken for the first time. She had met a boy at school, or rather, she had admired a boy at school. He was the stereotypical popular football player who everyone wanted. Judy would sit alone and stare from a distance as he would laugh and mess around with his friends. Judy never thought she stood a chance. He could have any girl he wanted. Why would he want the loner with her head always buried in a book? But as she was occupying her usual spot at lunch one day, he came sliding onto the bench next to her. “Hey,” he had said. “Sorry, I’ll move,” Judy responded without looking up. As she gathered her things and stood, he gently grabbed onto her arm and pulled out the same book she had been reading from his backpack. She lowered herself back down and they began chatting about the novel. It was the first time she had really talked to a boy. They began eating lunch together and two weeks into their hangouts, he asked her on a date. They were together for three months before Judy started catching his friends laughing at them and making comments. And then after school one day, she was walking out to the parking lot when she noticed her paintings and love letters plastered all over the school walls. They were special things she had created for him, that he and his friends were laughing at. She had come to find that the relationship was all a big prank. Judy was humiliated. He was the first person she had ever fallen for and within a matter of months, her heart was shattered. Luckily, it was her senior year and she got through the rest of it hiding out in the bathroom at lunch and keeping to herself throughout the day. With each passing day that led to graduation, pieces of her heart began to work together again until she was past the heartbreak and was healed.

In her 19th year, Judy came out. She had come to an understanding within herself at the idea that she wasn’t straight, not fully at least, but never had anyone to talk to. Obviously her mother wasn’t an option and she didn’t really have friends. But she had found herself attracted to women on more than one occasion, and not in a way that would be considered a friendly manner. And when she finally kissed a girl for the first time in her freshman year of college, she confirmed her previous years of wondering what her sexuality was. When she finally gathered the courage to tell her mother one night over the phone, there was a long silence before the older Hale told her daughter to never come home again. Judy felt a sharp pain rip through her heart, a pain she would never forget. For the first time, she understood how truly alone in the world she was. For someone who only ever wanted the best for others, the world was not treating her with the same love and respect. She accepted her mother’s reaction and moved on, letting her heart mend itself together again. 

Judy’s 20s were a decade of relatively small incidents, moments smaller than those she had suffered from before hitting 20. She was in and out of homeless shelters as she worked three jobs to try and get herself on the positive side of the spectrum. Her mother only came around when she needed something, which Judy provided. Relationships came and went, she always managed to find the ones that weren’t healthy. But Judy still tried to find the good things in life. She always went back to her art and released her feelings through the brush on a blank canvas. 

When she was 31, Judy received word her father had passed away. She sat in a cafe looking at the death certificate, oddly sad since she never knew the man. She figured the pain came from him walking out on her and her mother when Judy was a toddler. She always wondered where he was, what he was doing, and why she wasn’t good enough for him to stick around. Judy felt a pain she couldn’t describe, but just as quickly as it came, she was forgetting and healing again just as fast. 

Right after her 35th birthday, Judy met the man she thought she would spend the rest of her life with. Steve Wood was handsome with a dazzling smile that could knock a girl off her feet. Judy fell for him right away. They had met at an art gallery she had stumbled into. Steve was showing a piece to a customer but automatically his eyes gravitated toward Judy the moment she walked through the door. They spent hours wandering the gallery, speaking about each piece, and life in between. By the time Judy was leaving, the gallery had already been closed two hours and the sun had sunk low in the sky. Steve had asked her if she wanted to continue their conversation and they went to a small restaurant just down the street. They quickly found themselves in a serious relationship and within a year, Steve was proposing with a flash mob that Judy found very romantic. What she didn’t realize until they had experienced their first miscarriage was how toxic the relationship truly was. Steve had an anger issue that he handled by yelling hurtful things and occasionally raising a hand toward her. Four miscarriages later and Steve left her. Kicked her out. Left her homeless for about the 40th time in her life. But he still tried to control her. Her biggest focus was on her inability to have kids, how she wanted so badly to have a family, but she knew her body wouldn’t allow it. She worked through the pain of the miscarriages and the breakup on her own as she tried to piece herself back together. 

All those times she thought she was healing, really it was like placing a bandage over a stab wound, it would only hold a little bit until the pressure became too much.

After every incident was one recurring thought--I am broken. Judy never felt good enough for anyone in her life. Though she loved fiercely, it was never returned. She believed herself to just be a nuisance, a speck on the earth that could just disappear and no one would notice or care. 

Until her.

Jen.

Jen made her feel like she mattered. Jen made her feel whole. Piece by piece she was stitched up by Jen’s love holding her together. Judy was reminded that the circumstances of her past didn’t dictate who she was. She was someone who had been through a lot. But that didn’t make her broken. In fact, it made her strong. Jen made her realize that. 

Judy peered over her book at the woman lounging on the lawnchair to her left. Her tanned legs spread the length of the chair, lathered in sunscreen. Her blonde hair was up in a messy bun. Big sunglasses covered her eyes as she watched the boys swim in the pool. Judy let her eyes wander down Jen’s body. Her black bikini left little to the imagination. 

Times like these were Judy’s favorite. Just the four of them hanging out at home, pretending like they didn’t have a care in the world.

“I can feel you staring,” Jen said without removing her gaze from the pool.

Judy quickly diverted her eyes and went back to her book, but Jen crept over and planted herself on the edge of Judy’s chair. She hooked her finger over the top of the brunette’s book and slowly lowered it, revealing Judy’s large brown eyes.

“Hi,” Judy whispered.

“Why ya starin’?”

Judy huffed slightly, which made her bangs blow away from her face just a little. Jen smiled and brushed them out of her eyes completely, attempting to urge the brunette to express what she was feeling.

“I was just thinking,” she finally said.

“Oh yeah?” Jen questioned. “What about?”

Judy looked around, at the boys, the blue sky above, the green grass below, the house that had become home, until her eyes landed back on Jen--the woman who changed her life.

Jen gave her everything she ever wanted.

“I was thinking about how you have made me feel...like I’m not broken,” Judy answered, unable to meet the blue eyes staring back at her, but instead focused on her hands in her lap.

Jen scoffed and it made Judy wince. She looked up with her brows knit together and her bottom lip slightly stuck out in a pout. She looked like she was about to cry.

“Oh no, baby,” Jen started, reaching up to cup Judy’s face. “I didn’t mean that to come out the way it did.”

Judy swiped under her eye at the slight wetness that had formed along her lower eyelid. Jen replaced the brunette’s fingers with her own, gently caressing the soft skin.

“I scoffed because-” she stopped, watching the emotion swirling in Judy’s eyes and trying to find the perfect words to let her know how she was feeling. “-because you make me feel like I’m not broken.”

As Judy parted her lips to respond, Jen placed her finger against them to silence her.

“Judy Hale, from the moment you walked into my life I could feel myself becoming whole again. The first time your eyes landed on mine I felt my heart come alive again. The first time you touched me-“ Judy blushed as her mind filled the memory of Jen’s soft moans and her own lips against the blonde’s scars. “-you reminded me what it felt like to be beautiful. You make me feel more loved and alive than I’ve felt in a long time. You healed me.”

Judy gazed into Jen’s eyes, filled with sincerity and love. 

“All my life I’ve felt unwanted. You welcomed me into your life, really without question. You helped me to realize that I don’t have to be sorry all the time, that I deserve more than what life has given me in the past. Jen, you healed all my broken pieces that were just waiting to bust again.”

They stared at one another, really looked at the pair they had become. Life had tossed them both into the wild without help and then brought them together to fix each other. 

Perhaps it was the strength Jen gave her to finally gain the courage to confront her mother and tell her how horrible of a human she had been for all of Judy’s existence. Perhaps it was the love and support that reminded Jen that her surgery didn’t define who she was. Maybe it was the fact that a strong hand on Judy’s lower back or arm made Judy feel protected. Maybe Judy’s loving gaze allowed Jen to be vulnerable. 

Every day they taught each other how to live again and how to love without the fear of being rejected or hurt. They reminded each other that being broken in the past, didn’t mean they couldn’t heal.

“I’m going to kiss you.”

Judy grinned shyly.

“Okay,” she breathed out.

“The boys are going to be grossed out.”

Judy giggled in response as Jen leaned forward and captured the other woman’s lips in a tender kiss that Judy swore healed any pain she had ever felt in her lifetime.

Judy placed her dainty hand over Jen’s heart and felt it beat, a little quickly, against her palm. 

Jen broke the kiss and looked down, placing her own hand over Judy’s.

“You make that happen, Jude. You make my heart whole.”

Judy’s eyes filled with tears as she leaned in for another kiss. Jen wrapped her arms around Judy’s back and squeezed her close.

“Ewwww,” they heard the boys shout from the pool. They laughed into the kiss but before they could get very far into they’re giggle fit, they felt a wave of cold water wash over them.

Jen broke away and gave Judy a devious look.

“On the count of three?”

Judy smirked and said, “One.”

“Two,” Jen added.

“Three,” they yelled together as they leaped up from the chair and rushed towards the pool, jumping in together and pulling the boys down under with them. 

As the four of them broke the surface of the water, coming up for air and laughing so hard they cried, Judy felt a surge in her veins.

She looked across the pool to Jen, who was smiling back at her and mouthing ‘I love you.’

This is what it felt like to be truly happy. To have a life that you never wanted to end.

This is what it felt like to feel whole.


End file.
